Chris Ferric lives and works on Bunurong Country and Wurundjeri Country. They grew up on the floodplains of Tongarla (Murray River) and Balaba (Broken Creek) in bushland of Bangerang Nation. They were born in what English-speakers know as Japan, islands of living indigenous cultures Ainu and Uchinānchu. Ferric would like to offer a respectful acknowledgement to the Elders, past and present, of these places which they occupy and have occupied. While still trying to understand what the f*ck that means as a European settler-colonial.
Ferric is known for: slow collaborations with sitters to create larger-than-life-sized oil portraits; fast-paced drawings in live response to performance. In 2025 they were the winner of the Midsumma & Australia Post Art Award with their portrait of Jo Clifford. As collaborator with Snuff Puppets theatre company, their drawings unfold in front of audiences from a live digital projection for Snuff Salooon.
Ferric works onstage, backstage and atypical settings, creating performance and site-responsive works. Alongside oil and soft-pastel paintings, they have hand-sculpted in plaster, clay, precious metal, and fabric, and quite a bit of garbage, with intimate themes connected to bodies.
Ferric’s informal education has included a mentorship under artist and educator Jonas Ropponen, Feral Queer Camp, and research at Australian Queer Archives. Their ongoing development of a Community Engagement Strategy includes consultation with Arts Access Victoria. In 2022 under the Creative Victoria Creators Fund, Ferric spent 6 months developing methods to represent the diversity of disabled, queer and gender variant experiences within their work.
Going in to 2026, Ferric is interested in creative collaboration and evidence-based social change. In the face of fascism, and inextricable systemic, relational and climate change challenges, they warmly invite you to reach out to explore working together.
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“And maybe the power of [Ferric’s portrait of Clifford] comes from the fact that it is the creation of a queer/non-binary artist painting a queer/non-binary subject in a way that to me both references a queer artist of the past (El Greco), shines a light on a better future and acknowledges the power of both our presences in this present moment. I think it’s miraculous.”
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